“If scandal is to your taste, Miss MacKay,” I shall give you a feast!”
Over the years I have heard Maggie Smith’s memorable line from “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” proclaimed regularly in our house. This quote is a particular favourite of Sandra’s, especially as Sunday brunch is served.
Smith, of course, had a spectacular final act. She was an integral part of two very popular franchises from this century. She stole every scene she was in on Downton Abbey — the highest-rated drama in PBS history — as family matriarch Violet Crawley.
“I never argue,” said the peevish matron. “I explain.”
Smith had a small but always showy role on Downton Abbey. Co-star Joanne Froggatt (loyal maid Anna Smith) told reporters attending a 2013 Television Critics Association press tour that Julian Fellowes — who wrote every script in the series — has a special knack for female dialogue.
“Maggie Smith is, you know — is kind of his muse in a way, the way he writes for Maggie and the way she delivers those lines.” The role won her three Primetime Emmy Awards for Supporting Actress in a Limited series as well as a Golden Globe and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
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From 2001 to 2011, Smith enhanced seven of the eight Harry Potter films as Professor Minerva McGonagall. Author J.K. Rowling personally requested Smith for that role. The films to date have earned $7.7 billion in wordlwide receipts.
Decades earlier, Smith won an Oscar and a Bafta for her lead role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969) and went on to a string of theatrical hits in the ’70s, including “Travels with my Aunt” (1972), “Murder by Death” (1976), “Death on the Nile” (1978) and “California Suite” (1978). She won a second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting, for playing an Oscar loser in that Neil Simon comedy.
There is, by the way, a tidy connection between “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and Downton Abbey. The former was directed by Ronald Neame. The latter was produced by his grandson, Gareth Neame.
Her stage credits were even more impressive. Smith was a star at both the Old Vic and the Royal National Theatre. She shone in productions directed by and opposite Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud. She was also a sensation on Broadway, receiving three Tony award nominations, finally winning in 1990 for playwright Peter Shaffer’s “Lettice and Lovage” (1990).
The prime of Miss Maggie Smith, however, may have occurred in the later half of the ’70s on the stages of the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario. I was fortunate to enjoy a few of her performances there, including her star turn as Rosalind in director Robin Phillips’ sublime production of “As You Like It.” Smith was so irresistably present in that play, seaming to speak her own mind rather than the words she had so skillfully memorized. Such immediacy and so damn funny. A few years later I went back to see her own the stage again in “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Smith died Sept. 27 at 89. King Charles III called her a national treasure.
“We join all those around the world in remembering with the fondest admiration and affection her many great performances, and her warmth and wit that shone through both on and off the stage.”
